1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a system and a method for generating computer-accessible documents from a plurality of data sources and maintaining the integrity of the documents.
2. Related Art
It is common when generating a business document, such as a text file or presentation slides, to draft, review, and revise the document multiple times before a final document is produced. Often, such a document includes data imported from multiple sources and multiple applications external to the document. Typically, the importation of data into a document is performed manually, once a user has located the relevant data. Generating a document that requires a large volume of data to be imported, such as, for example, presentation slides in which data from multiple sources are compiled, can take weeks, sometimes even months, to produce depending on the size of the document.
Additionally, because a document often is edited and revised multiple times before a final document is produced, changes between each version of the document are lost when a new version is not created for each time the document is modified. If multiple users have access to the document, maintaining the integrity of the document becomes increasingly difficult. Accordingly, a need exists for an improved way of automating the creation of documents that utilize external or imported data, and for an improved means of maintaining the integrity of such documents in order to reduce the time and human error often associated with documents made through the collaborative efforts of multiple users.